breadsmasher , 3 months ago

In certain cases, are you confusing operating system with firmware?

Especially back in the day before “smart” washing machines, they would run a specific firmware rather than a more general OS

The firmware will have all the logic and functionality for the given device but isn’t designed to be extended or have additional software added to it, like an OS would.

There are then much smaller OSs which run on more modern devices where software extensibility and more complex tasks are desired.